Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems

Published

July 20, 2015

Author(s)

Stephen A. Cauffman

Abstract

Every community in the United States faces the risk of natural, human-caused, or technological hazards. While most hazards do not rise to the level of extreme events, natural hazards often inflict significant economic losses and disruption to lives and commerce due to damage to buildings and infrastructure systems. To address this problem, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) convened a diverse body of community resilience stakeholders through a series of workshops to inform the development of a planning guide for strengthening resilience. The first major deliverable under this program, the Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (Guide), was released as a draft for public comment on April 27, 2015. Electric power underpins the functioning of our modern society. When hazards cause power to be disrupted for extended periods of time, the disruption causes cascading effects on other systems that are essential to daily life and commerce, such as water and wastewater systems, communications. Dependencies among the transportation systems, liquid fuels and the electrical power grid can affect the rate at which power is restored following an outage. Identifying and understanding the importance of social and economic functions and the dependencies that exist among the social functions and buildings infrastructure systems allows for proper planning and implementation of practices or improvements that lead to greater resilience.

Citation

ei, the magazine of the electroindustry

Pub Type

Others

Keywords

community resilience, buildings, infrastructure, social functions, electric power

Citation

Cauffman, S. (2015), Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, ei, the magazine of the electroindustry (Accessed April 26, 2024)